LX
ONCE MORE HUGH SINGS
Between that great eastward bend nearly opposite the mouth of the Arkansas, which in later years was cut off and is now, or was yesterday, Beulah Lake—between it and Ozark Island below—a white-jacket came up from the passenger deck far enough to show his head to the watchman above and warily asked a question.
"Six," was the reply. "Including me—seven."
The inquirer ran wildly down again, but the Enchantress sped on through the glorious moonlight as though he scarcely mattered. On the texas roof Mrs. Gilmore sat with "California," her husband with Watson, Hugh with Ramsey. But only the last two were out on its forward verge. Mrs. Gilmore had found it cool there and with the others had drawn back a few steps, into the pleasant warmth of the chimneys. For average passengers the evening was far gone, but not for players, pilots, Californians, or lovers—of the river.
A mile or so farther on, the white-jacket reappeared and, gliding by all others to reach his captain, said, with mincing feet and a semicircular bow, while presenting a tray of six, not seven, sherry cobblers:
"Sev'l gen'lemen's comp'ments, an' ax, will Mis' Gil'——"
"What gentlemen? Who?"
"Sev'l gen'lemen, yassuh. Dey tell me dess say, sev'l gen'lemen. Sev'l gen'lemen ax will Mis' Gilmo' have de kin'ness fo' to sing some o' dem same songs she sing night afo' las' in de ladies' cabin an' las' night up hyuh.... Yass'm, whiles dey listens f'om de b'ileh deck."
"Has my father gone to bed?" asked Ramsey.
"No'm, he up yit. He done met up wid dese sev'l gen'lemen an' find dey old frien's—callin' deyse'v's in joke Gideon' Ban'—an' he talkin' steamboats wid 'em——"
The speaker tittered as Ramsey inquiringly extended her arms out forward and crossed her wrists. "Yass'm," he said, "hin' feet on de front rail, yass'm."
It seemed but fair that Mrs. Gilmore, to meet the compliment generously, should sing at the very front of the hurricane roof, just over the forward guards of the boiler deck. But Ramsey and Hugh kept their place. Ramsey wanted to be near the sky, she explained, when songs were sung on the water by moonlight, and eagerly spoke for two or three which her friend had sung of old on the Votaress to spiritualize the "acrobatics" of the Brothers Ambrosia.
The singer's voice was rich, trained, and mature, and her repertory a survival of young days—nights—before curtains and between acts: Burns, Moore, Byron, and Mrs. Norton, alternating with "The Lavender Girl," "Rose of Lucerne," "Dandy Jim o' Caroline," and "O Poor Lucy Neal." And now she sang her best, in the belief that while she sang the pair up between her and the pilot-house were speaking conclusively. Let us see.
"Ramsey," said Hugh, and waited—ten seconds—twenty.
Well, why should he not? In eight years and a half there were ten million times twenty seconds and she had waited all of them. At length she responded and the moment she did so she thought she had spoken too promptly although all she said was, "Yes?"
"The hour's come at last," said Hugh.
"What hour?—hour to name that boat?"
"Yes, to name that boat. Only not that first. Ramsey, I've told your father all I ever wanted to tell you."
"Humph!" The response was so nearly in the manner of the earlier Ramsey, "the Ramsey he had begun with" and whom she remembered with horror, that she recognized the likeness. The further reply had been on her tongue's end, that to tell her father only that could not have taken long, or some such parrying nonsense; but now it would not come. She felt her whole nature tempted to make love's final approach steep and slippery, but again without looking she saw his face; his face of stone; his iron face with its large, quiet, formidable eyes that could burn with enterprise in great moments; a face set to all the world's realities, and eyes that offered them odds, asking none. So seeing she knew that if she answered with one least note of banter she would make herself an object of his magnanimity, than which she would almost rather fall under his scorn—if he ever stooped to scorn. Suddenly she remembered the deadlock and was smitten with the conviction that these exchanges were love's last farewell. Now it was hard to speak at all.
"What was it you told him?"
"I told him how long I'd loved you, and why."
"We both love the river so," murmured Ramsey in a voice broken by the pounding of her heart.
"Yes. I told him that, for one thing. And I told him how gladly I would have asked for you long ago had I not seen myself, as you so often saw me on the Votaress——"
"Condemned to inaction," she softly prompted; for if this was farewell a true maiden must speed the parting.
"Yes."
"By an absolute deadlock," she murmured on. "My father sees it. He knows it's one yet and must always be one."
"No, a lock but not a deadlock. It's a lock to which your brothers do not hold the key."
The pounding in her breast, which had grown better, grew worse again. "Who holds it?"
"Your father. I have just told him so. At no time would I have hesitated to ask for you if the key had been with your brothers. I would have got a settlement from them, sink or swim, alive or dead. I believe in lover's rights, Ramsey, and I'll have a lover's rights at any risk or cost that falls only on me. Those old threats—yes, I know how fiercely they are still meant—and they have always had their weight; but they've never of themselves weighed enough to stop me. I've held off and endured, waiting not for a change of heart in your brothers, but for an hour counselled, Ramsey, by my father on his dying bed."
"What hour? Hour of strongest right? strongest reason?"
"Not at all. The hour I've waited for was the one which would best enable me to meet your father on equal terms as measured by his own standards."
"Oh, I see. I believe I see."
"Yes, the hour when I should be not owner merely, but captain too, of the finest boat——"
"Dat eveh float'—" she tenderly put in.
"Yes, on this great river."
"Oh, Captain Courteney——"
"Don't Courteney or captain me now, Ramsey, whether this is beginning or end." There was a silence, and then—
"Hugh," she said, as softly as a female bird trying her mate's song, "you mustn't ask my father. You mustn't ask any one. I can't let you."
"Your father's already asked. If he consents I go ashore at Natchez, having telegraphed ahead from Vicksburg——"
"You shan't. You shan't go to my brothers. You shan't go armed and you shan't go unarmed."
"Yes, I shall. I'll go and settle with them in an hour without the least fear of violence on either side."
"Armed with nothing but words? You shan't. And armed with anything else you shan't."
"Ramsey, words are the mightiest weapon on earth. The world's one perfect man—we needn't be pious to say it—set about to conquer the human race by the sheer power of words and died rather than use any other weapon. Died victorious, as he counted victory. And the result—a poor, lame beginning of the result—is what we call Christendom."
"You shan't die victorious for me."
"No, I shall not. I talk much too vast."
"Humph! you always did." She smiled, but a moonbeam betrayed a tear on her folded hands.
"True," he admitted. "I talk too vast. I'm only claiming the power of words in small as well as large. I've no hope of martyrdom; I'm only confident of victory."
"No matter. You won't go ashore at Natchez."
"You mean your father won't consent?"
"I do. There's one thing, at the very bottom of his heart, that you've never thought of."
"I think I have."
"What is it?"
"That as the Hayle boats are all one day to be yours, and our union would unite the two fleets under the one name of Courteney, he will never allow it."
"He never will."
"Ramsey, he says he may. If we and the boats are so united the fleet will be, while grandfather lives, the Courteney fleet; but each new boat from now on will be named for a Hayle, beginning with you, or your father, or your mother, as you and they may choose. At Vicksburg, if he consents in time, we can telegraph her—we must have her—to come aboard at Natchez for the rest of the trip. Grandfather, I suppose you've been told, is now waiting for us at Vicksburg. He came up on the Antelope."
"The Antelope! How do you know?"
"By a despatch received at Memphis."
"Mmm! what a blessing is the telegraph! But, ah, Hugh"—the name was almost naturalized—"this is a mere castle in the air! My—my brothers——"
"I'll take care of them."
"You can't! You can't! Oh, Hugh, they—keep—their—threats." She caught a breath and looked at him. If he went seeking them she would go at his side! He must have read her mind, for in his majestical way he smilingly shook his head.
Mrs. Gilmore had ceased to sing and with the others had risen and turned Ramsey's way, confident that up there the conclusive word had been spoken. Ramsey called down:
"Don't stop. Sing 'My Old Kentucky Home' or that thing in which 'the river keeps rolling along' and 'the future's but a dream.' We're song hungry up here."
"Then sing to each other," was the reply. "You can do it."
"Let Captain Hugh sing," said Watson. "He's off watch."
"He says," said Ramsey, "captains don't sing on the texas roof." She moved to join the group on its way to an after stair. Watson bent his steps for the pilot-house. At the stair the actor's wife let her husband and "California" go down before her and as Ramsey and Hugh came close said covertly:
"Sing, captain. Sing as softly as you please, just for us two while the world is in dreams and sleep, won't you?"
The lover's heart was big with happiness, his solicitor had just been singing pointedly in his interest, the seclusion here was all but absolute, the quoted line was from Ramsey's song of that first night on the Votaress, and to the bright surprise of both his hearers he laid a touch on Mrs. Gilmore's arm and in a restrained voice so confidential as to reach only to the pilot-house above and to the two men at the stair's foot below began to sing.
Before half a line was out the Californian had seized both of Gilmore's shoulders. "My poem!" he gasped. "I gave it to him last night to grammatize! He's fit it to a tchune. Partner, he's the only man that's listened——"
"Sh-sh-sh! listen yourself," whispered the actor, and this is what they heard:
[Listen to a midi file of this music]
"If heaven might make my garden
An empire wide and great,
Fidelity should close it in,
The joy of life bloom evergreen,
And love be law and thou be queen,
Might I but keep the gate.
"For where would be my garden,
Dear love, from thee apart?
Whose every bush and bower and tree,
Its founts, perfumes, and minstrelsy
And all its flowers spring all from thee,
Thou sunlight of my heart."
"You say that's your poem?" murmured the actor.
"Oh, he's doctored it," stealthily admitted the Californian. "He's doctored it a lot."